Dentists.
Yep, our NHS Dentist is not currently seeing patients because Covid, however if you’re a private patient it’s not so much of an issue.
Computer Stuff in general
Yep, Absolute perfect storm or ‘cluster ****’ if you prefer.
Part of my every day life, is specifying, buying, configuring (that bit someone else does) and selling Computer Hardware…
Last year I, along with everyone else in the the trade bought any and every laptop we could lay our hands on, honestly I bought and sold some proper shady crap – if you wanted a Gold colourer laptop with a 5 year old processor that, and I’m not making this up, had a chassis that was more than 60% full of air for £800 (plus Vat) I was your Man, not because I’m a con man, but because with everyone of our 3k-ish end-users clambering to WFH at short notice, it’s all we could get, and clients didn’t mind.
Once every piece of shit device from every channel supplier was gone, we asked when we could buy more only to be told “The stock that’s coming in now, is the last stock we’ll be getting for a while, the factories are closed”. It came, we bought it, it’s gone.
Fast-Forward to August 2020 and things were starting to feel more normal, both in general and in the IT world, bosh, here comes Kent / Wave 2 and every Local Authority in the UK buys up everything they can get their mitts on ready for home schooling in September.
Then Semiconductor shortages, Suez etc etc etc.
Thankfully, supply is *just* about keeping up with demand at the moment, it’s hard finding stock, but not impossible, it’s the price that’s hurting us. HP / Dell et al, they’re not wasting their valuable CPU stock on banging out standard issue Business machines, they’re starting at the mid-range and above, plus like bike parts the industry generally works on a high stated rrp with 20% discounts being the norm, not anymore. the £400 unit I was buying in Feb 2020 is now £600 or more.
All that pales to the fact I really fancy an Xbox Series X and can’t buy one.